Though we already knew the second season of The Girlfriend Experience would start over with entirely new characters, Starz revealed released a bevy of new details Thursday, explaining that the 14-episode season will actually cover not one but two separate, seemingly unrelated storylines—one in Washington DC, and one in New Mexico.
“I’m as excited as a Swedish person is allowed to get,” said Executive Producer Steven Soderbergh—who directed the movie by the same name that spurred the television series—in a glib statement.
In the Washington DC story, Anna Friel (Pushing Daisies) and Louisa Krause (Martha Marcy May Marlene) play opposite one another, and it seems like a bit of House of Cards action goes down, as it concerns “the corrupting influence of dark money in the upcoming 2018 U.S. mid-term elections, where everything and everyone has a price.” The show will follow:
...an unexpected and complex relationship between Erica Myles, a commanding and strong-willed finance director of a Republican super PAC, and Anna Greenwald, a confident and intelligent GFE provider at the top of her game. Erica is under intense pressure to deliver on her super PAC fundraising goals. She meets Anna and enlists her help in blackmailing a high-powered dark money fundraiser. After their initial exchange, Erica and Anna fall into a complicated sexual relationship, marked by an exploration of vulnerability, dominance and submission, which also draws in Erica’s manipulative ex-girlfriend. The mix of personal instability and career pressure mount and lead Erica down a path, both professionally and personally, that she struggles to control.
The New Mexico storyline features Carmen Ejogo (Selma) as Bria Jones:
After discovering disturbing information about a regular client, Jones is forced to relocate to a remote location in New Mexico. Unable to shake her desire for risky relationships and the finer things in life, Bria navigates her new penniless and surreal existence by forming eerily intimate transactional relationships. While Bria’s ghosts from the past continue to haunt, her new connections with men redefine the meaning of the Girlfriend Experience.
Season 1 of The Girlfriend Experience was defined by Riley Keough’s deeply chilly portrayal of Christine, which drifted like a fog across the rest of her universe. While Season 2 looks to have characters made of different stuff, the spookiness factor does not appear to have abated.